Torchwood: LA
by Independent Dude
Summary: My now AU Torchwood/24/Dr. Who/House crossover.  Invited by the US Government to set up a Torchwood branch in LA, Gwen Cooper decides to recruit the very best for the job.  Some violence and swearing.
1. This Very Hour

Torchwood: LA

Chapter 1

_**The following takes place eighteen months after the events of **_**24: Day Eight **_**and twelve months after day five of **_**Torchwood: Children of Earth.**

_**All characters are the property of their respective authors. All original characters and events which occur in this story are mine.**_

Jack Bauer awakened to the sound of his cell door being opened. That it was a full hour until morning reveille at the federal Supermax prison in which he had spent the last ten months was enough to pique his curiosity, but not enough to alarm him. Jack knew he was in no danger from the other prisoners at the facility, having been placed in solitary almost from the first day of his incarceration. Nor was he in danger from any of the guards, most of whom showed a kind of guilty respect when they interacted with him.

He was, however, annoyed by the sound of a metal chair scraping across the floor that came a few minutes after the cell door was opened. He turned over in his bed to look at whoever was disturbing his sleep. He was surprised to see a dark haired woman in her early to mid thirties, wearing a black leather jacket and jeans, dragging a chair in with her. Just as Bauer looked at her, she turned her head up and met his eyes – but not before scraping the chair one more time.

The woman froze for a moment, looking up at him like the proverbial deer in the headlights. Then she glanced down at the chair and spoke, pointing at it: "I…I was going for that thing…where you wake up…and I'm already there," she said, pantomiming what she meant by moving a chair and sitting in it and the like and nodding at Bauer as if the problem was simply that he could not follow.

Jack gave her a quick, short nod as she sat down and positioned the chair to face him.

"That would have been cool, right? If I had carried that off?" she asked, forcing a weak smile.

Jack just continued to stare at her, unable to believe what he was witnessing.

"Anyhoo…" said the brunette as she looked down and picked up the attaché case which had been laying at her feet. She opened up the case and began to leaf through a manila folder. "Jack Bauer. Formerly commander of CTU Los Angeles. Formerly attached to Secretary of Defense James Heller's private staff. Decorated for numerous actions taken in defense of United States interests. Arrested for murder of Russian ambassador at New York peace conference. Also questioned for role in disrupting government operations at Camp Bravo National Guard Base during the 456 Crisis; all counts pertaining to that case dropped." She closed the folder and put it back in the case.

"Yes, you'll do," she said.

Jack was not sure how to respond. "Who are you?" he finally asked.

"Gwen Cooper," said the woman, offering her hand. "I'm with Torchwood."

Jack remained wary of her outstretched hand. "Torchwood? What's that?"

"Funny you should ask," said Gwen, reaching into the case again, "as that has a lot to do with why I am here today." She pulled out another folder, and handed it to Jack.

Bauer opened the folder and saw photographs of bodies. With his vast experience in those types of matters, he quickly determined from their layout and the pattern of debris that the photos were of the aftermath of a bombing. On a clinical level, he ran through calculations in his head and was able to guess at the type of target struck. He could see that some of the cars in the background were American, and others were not. He could see signs in English with French subtitles. From there, it was a short trip to…

"This is the Ottawa bombing, isn't it?"

"Aye, that it is" said Gwen, "and I'm impressed with your ability to keep up with events which have occurred since you've been locked down here."

"The prisoner across from me is a jihadist," said Bauer, pointing past Gwen's shoulder. "They sent down a team to 'interrogate' him after the bombing happened. The doors aren't fully soundproof." The pejorative tone Jack laid on _interrogate_ left little doubt as to what he had thought, not so much of the moral ascendancy of the interrogators' actions, but rather their skill. "Why are you showing me this?" asked Jack, continuing with his own interrogation.

"Because it sets the context for these," said Gwen, and she handed Jack more photos.

Jack looked at them. They seemed to be more of the same. There were three bodies in particular laid out in a line with military precision. Being more than a casual observer, Jack could tell that those three bodies had been set aside in that way because they belonged to the alleged perpetrators of the bombing. He saw blood stains consistent with multiple gunshots, alluding to a firefight. This was new information. The target in Ottawa had reportedly been a provincial game and fishery office, so there would have been rangers there, but as far as he knew, Canadian park rangers did not carry sidearms for desk jobs. Certainly not the automatic weapons which had obviously left their mark on these terrorists' bodies.

"What the hell?" Jack was focusing on the arm of one of the dead hostiles. At least, it was in the place where his arm was supposed to be. Jack had first thought it was a severed limb from another body, mangled in the blast and coincidentally laying on the ground where they had chosen to stage the bodies. But it was definitely attached to the twenty-something white male whose body occupied the center position of the three. It looked burned and flattened. But then he realized that these pictures were in color, and the arm was actually _green_.It was not burned; it had scales like a reptile, or even like a starfish. It was too long to be an arm, for the size of the rest of the body he saw. And there was a circular red _light_ in the middle of the forearm.

"Ah?" said Gwen, knowing full well she'd caught Jack's interest. "Tell me, Mr. Bauer, what do you see?" she asked.

Jack thought for a moment, and then shook his head. "I've been down here too long. These bodies are really badly damaged. They must have been close to the epicenter of the blast."

"No, not your interpretation," insisted Gwen, leaning closer to Jack. "What do you _see_?"

Jack could not answer her. He just looked at the photos, trying and discarding theories for why the man's arm looked like it did. The best one he could come up with was that the man's arm had been run over by a heavy truck, like in a cartoon. But there were no tire tracks (dear God! he was actually extrapolating the Wil E. Coyote model to its logical conclusion!), and the arm ended in too sharp of a point to be explained by compression. "I don't know," he admitted quietly but clearly.

That response seemed to satisfy Gwen, because her expression immediately softened into a pleasant smile. "Good," the mysterious woman said. "I respect a man who can admit when he doesn't know something. Takes all the ridiculous, time-consuming posturing out of the equation, and lets everyone get down to business." Gwen took out more photos and laid them on the bed next to Bauer. "They're called Cell 114."

"Who? Who is called Cell 114?" asked Jack.

"The terrorists," said Gwen, giving the room's newly-formed elephant a short reprieve. "Sleeper cells, specializing in infiltration, disruption, and sabotage. They embed themselves in our society. Then they wait, and begin attacking installations when activated."

"Muslim extremists?" asked Jack, not wanting to go elephant hunting just yet.

"No. Not Muslims," said Gwen, shaking her head. This time it was her turn to speak quietly.

"I'm not sure I see where this is going," said Jack, though even he knew he was just stalling.

"Yes you do," said Gwen. She pointed to the pictures laid out on the bed. They showed more images of impossible biology.

"Why would these…sleeper cells…want to blow up an unimportant municipal building?" asked Bauer, changing the subject. "It doesn't fit the M.O. of any terrorist group I know of, Middle Eastern or Canadian militia. And the choice of target doesn't make sense."

"Because it was no mere local government office," said Gwen. "Come on; it didn't strike you as a little off that Al-Quaeda would want to cripple the West's capacity to obtain fishing licenses? And on a street which sees very little traffic, when there was a busy thoroughfare just two blocks away? No. The provincial office was just a front. What they really blew up was Torchwood Five."

"Torchwood Five?" asked Jack.

"Yes," replied Gwen. "The Canadian branch. There's one in Sydney, too. That's Torchwood Six."

"It's a British unit, then. MI-6?"

"Well, not exactly," said Gwen. "We operate outside the Home Office."

"NATO?"

"Beyond NATO," said Gwen, and then she sat back and explained. "Torchwood was commissioned by Queen Victoria in the 19th Century to defend the Empire from certain…extraordinary threats. The first command was based at the Torchwood Estate, but was later moved to the capital in London. Three other branches were set up in the Isles. Of those, only Torchwood Two in Glasgow was still in operation as of six months ago. I myself was the junior member of Torchwood Three, working out of Cardiff, until our Hub was destroyed in a 'terrorist bombing' of our own last year."

"The Millennium Center bombing," intuited Jack after a moment. "Was that the 114, too?"

"No, that was a different enemy," said Gwen, and the look in her eyes that told Jack that the story behind that was one secret his visitor was not yet ready to share.

"Mr. Bauer," continued Gwen. "I didn't come down here to rehash old history. Elements of Cell 114 have been becoming more and more active over the past few months since Ottawa. They remain a principal threat to the safety of this planet. I am in Los Angeles, having been invited by your government to set up a Torchwood office -"

"I don't care," said Jack quietly.

"I'm sorry?"

"It's not my problem anymore."

This time, it was Gwen's turn to be dumbfounded. "But…but Mr. Bauer…" was all she could get out.

"Let me just stop you right there," said Bauer, pushing away the pictures. "I know a recruiting pitch when I hear it. This is me you're talking to. I was head of a counter terrorist agency; I've 'been there, done that' on this whole 'your country needs you' spiel. Hell, I've _done_ the spiel enough times to know what you're going to say.

"Let me fill in the blanks for you," said Jack, ticking off items on his fingers. "You're going to tell me that no less than the President himself has authorized a conditional parole if I join your 'team.' Said team will have the responsibility of assessing and countering an imminent threat to national security. Said team will also have on paper full legal authority and resources to deal with that threat. And, once the threat has been dealt with, said team will be hung out to dry. Seriously, it's like Mad-Libs. Only we never remember to tell them that last part, do we, Ms. Cooper? They get to play the hero, but look where they end up," said Jack, gesturing up at the ceiling.

Gwen looked at Jack, and then started with what she instantly realized was the wrong thing. "The offer of parole is legitimate, Mr. Bauer."

"No, I'm done," said Jack. "I did my part for President and Republic. Why are you even talking to me, anyway? Isn't there some young turk you can be out recruiting for this windmill tilt?"

The Torchwood operative responded with confidence, and even a hint of righteous indignation. It was obvious that she had thought very highly of her reasoning for seeking Bauer out.

"My boss in Cardiff was a superior leader," she said. "Everything I know about Torchwood I learned from him. However, his strategy for personnel recruitment left a lot to be desired. 'Right place, right time' does not a good system make. I intend to change that. I want the best. That's why I came to you, Mr. Bauer. You are the best."

"It's not my job anymore," said Jack, again referencing his surroundings. "Find someone else to help you go hunt aliens. In fact, this is probably the safest place for me to be right now. Half the world thinks I'm dead, and the other half wishes I was. And I'll tell you something else: after everything I've gone through, every choice I've made, I don't have that many regrets. I sleep well."

"I see," said Gwen. She began picking up her photographs. She stopped, though, catching something Jack had said. "You buy the part about aliens? I mean, I had to be shown alien tech in use before I believed."

"They wouldn't have let you down here if you were just some civilian conspiracy nut," answered Bauer. "Plus, there was the 456 Crisis. I'll bet it made believers out of a lot of people."

"Ah, yes, there was that," said Gwen. She put her photographs and folders into her attaché and stood up to leave. She turned back to Bauer. "It must have been hell for you, when you realized Ortiz' intel was wrong."

"What do you mean?" asked Jack, his eyes instantly narrowing.

"I mean, when you got to Camp Bravo and realized that your granddaughter was not there. It's not surprising, really. It's not like they had a lot of time to plan what they were doing, and any kind of recordkeeping was certainly a non-starter. Of course, the irony is, if your daughter and her family had not been in hiding and using hastily constructed aliases, and living in that slum in Houston, Teri would never have been in that school to be picked up in the first place…"

"Shut up!" Jack said hoarsely.

"It would have been quite natural for you to try to leave, to try to find the camp where your granddaughter actually was, once you noticed she was not there," continued Gwen. "Even though there would have been no time to get to Camp Alpha, no one would have blamed you for getting back in your vehicle and trying to find the other base. I mean, one has to take care of one's own family first, right?" she asked.

"Damn you!" said Jack, nearly shouting.

"But you didn't, did you? You knew you didn't have time to find your granddaughter, and you saw those kids at Camp Bravo, scared, alone. So you stayed." Gwen moved quickly to sit down next to Jack and get into his personal space before continuing. "You took over the base, using only non-lethal force and causing zero fatalities – quite an impressive feat, I might add. You took over the base, and held it for seven hours, even after the crisis had ended, defending five hundred kids against a government which had turned from its covenant with its people. Goddammit, there should be a big fat medal on your chest, not prison stripes!" Gwen poked him to punctuate her anger, as this time, she was the one shouting.

"You asked why I chose you," said Gwen, pausing briefly to compose herself. "I chose you, Mr. Bauer, because I looked at your record and saw that, with a couple of exceptions, you have always done, or at least tried to do, _the right thing_. You put right and wrong above all other considerations, even your personal ones. You are exactly the kind of person I want at my right hand, helping me defend this world from evils like the 456. Join me, Mr. Bauer, and we can keep our families safe."

_** Doot...deet…doot…deet… **_

John Powers was bored. He was so staggeringly bored with life in the small town in whose outskirts the surface facility of the Supermax facility sat that he had gotten a job as an associate at a local home improvement store. The fact that his name was really not John Powers but rather Yuri Malinin, and that he was not an unemployed IT consultant but instead an active agent in the Russian FSB, only served to accentuate just how bored he was. The job he had gotten was not necessary to maintain his cover, nor was it intended to make up for any deficiency in his spy's salary (he was being paid rather well for this assignment, at least there was that), but it did give him something to do with his time.

Yuri mused on the boring turn his career seemed to have taken as he searched around his apartment for the work uniform he had ironed the night before. He had once been one of the FSB's best assassins, having been sent regularly on missions to Iraq, Georgia, Lithuania, and a host of other places most Russian citizens would never hear about. Now, however, the forty-something man with a nascent paunch and salt-and-pepper hair was stuck in a one-McDonald's town in southern California, keeping watch over a prison just in case one of its most dangerous prisoners were to attempt escape. Or if the Americans were, as the Director had put it, to attempt to "pull a fast one" and let the man out intentionally. Either outcome was so unlikely that the FSB felt it had no need to send one of its younger agents, but rather the aging Malinin. _Yes, send Yuri, he is a good one to waste on a babysitting mission_, they had probably said.

Yuri found the uniform and put it on. It had been laying on the chair in his "action room," where he had his surveillance equipment. The telescope and camera which were trained on the prison's entrance were invisible from street level, as he had applied a special coating to his second floor apartment's window which had polarized the glass. The computer showed a real-time view of the prison entrance and parking lot. It recorded up to six hours of video on a loop, which he could watch at his convenience (he almost never did).

A flashing icon at the bottom of the screen alerted Yuri to the fact that a new visitor had come to the prison while he had been sleeping that morning. Yuri checked the video file which had been copied out. It showed an attractive thirty-something woman with dark hair getting out of a black SUV. Nothing unusual about her in and of itself, as US intelligence agents had been rotating in and out of the prison with semi-regularity since the Ottawa bombing. He flagged the file for transmission back to Moscow, where the Directorate's facial recognition software would figure out who she was and assign her to a database. His money was on her being Homeland Security. Two of the last three had been.

As the satellite which would accept the file's encrypted transmission would not be overhead for another hour, and as his shift at the new job was supposed to begin in about that same timeframe, Yuri powered down his monitor and went to find his keys. He hoped that something interesting would happen at his new job today.

_**Doot…deet…doot…deet…**_

Jack was slightly annoyed that the prison had not kept his clothes. While he realized that Supermax prisoners were not customarily released, it would have been nice if he had had something to change into while being processed out. As it was, Gwen had had to pay one of the nicer guards fifty dollars for the jeans and Hawaiian shirt he had worn in to work that day, because she had not anticipated the problem, either.

"We'll stop and buy you some shoes on the way back," Gwen promised him.

"We're going to LA?" asked Bauer, as he got the last button.

"Yes. That's where we've set up. I'll have someone get you up to speed, get you a place to stay, and then you go live tomorrow."

"And the government is okay with me being your second in command?"

"They wanted an American," shrugged Gwen. The guard behind the desk was still putting Jack's release order through the computer, so they had plenty of time to talk. "The plan is for me to run things at the beginning, and then gradually turn over command to an entirely American team; at my discretion, of course. So I know they wanted me to pick someone I could groom into the role for them. But I told them that I do things my way, or not at all. And my way is to pick the best people, and to hell with the politics."

Jack nodded approvingly. He was starting to really like this Gwen Cooper. She had managed to almost completely allay any second thoughts he might have had about accepting her offer in just the half-hour that had passed.

Just as the one guard was finishing Jack's paperwork, a second walked in. Jack immediately recognized him as Teague, the one guard on the prison staff who had given him trouble. Teague was a shift supervisor, a blond Gen-Y puke who thought that the world was black and white, and therefore anyone who was a prisoner at the facility needed to be treated with pure contempt and nothing more. He had ridden Jack's case so much that Jack had had no choice but to break the man's nose within weeks of arriving at the prison. The punishment Jack had received for that act had been unsurprisingly lenient.

"What is Bauer doing here?" Teague roared. "Why is he out of his cell?"

"They have orders for his release," said the other guard, "signed by the President." He handed the sealed letter Gwen had given him to Teague.

"This is not protocol!" said Teague, then to his subordinate, "Call someone. Find out how this is possible!"

Gwen calmly walked over to Teague, until her head was about twelve inches from his sternum. "Here, use my cell," said the Torchwood operative, offering the tall guard her phone. "The White House is number four on speed dial. Though you might want to think up how you're going to explain to POTUS why you pulled him out of his luxury box five minutes before tipoff at the Virginia-Virginia Tech game" – she made a show of looking at her watch, even though the cellphone displayed perfect time – "just to verify an order that he's already signed."

Teague said nothing, and actually backed slightly away from Gwen. After a few more seconds, Gwen put her cellphone away and turned back to Bauer. "Come on, Jack," she said, "We have a long drive ahead of us."

Jack followed her out the doors of the prison. The morning sun was just coming up, and it was bright. Jack had to put a hand up to his eyes, having gotten used to fluorescent lighting for almost the past year.

"Are you okay?" asked Gwen, as they reached her truck.

"This is real, isn't it?" said Jack.

"Yes, it is. Jack –"

Jack was just about to climb into the passenger side of the SUV. "Yeah?"

"There's something I forgot to discuss," said Gwen. She had not gone around to unlock her door. She was still standing next to Bauer. "As I said when we were below, I did a lot of research on you. And one thing the research said was that when Jack Bauer gives his word, he keeps it." Gwen looked around at the wooded property which surrounded the prison. "Not that I am impugning your nature, Mr. Bauer, but I'm sure the thought of running away and disappearing again has crossed your mind now that you are outside of your cell. You wouldn't be human if it didn't."

Jack paused. The thought had randomly occurred to him within the last couple of minutes. He had tried forced it away, but it was still there.

"If you run away now, two things will happen, both of which will be beyond my ability to control. The first is that you and your family will lose the legal protection which the President has been willing to extend to you."

"What's the other thing?" asked Bauer.

"You will make me look really foolish," said Gwen, and she smiled.

Jack looked at her, and made up his mind. He knew what the woman was asking of him. He offered her his hand.

"Ms. Cooper, you have my word that I will not violate the terms of my parole. I will not try to flee, and I will join your team."

"Thank you," said Gwen, and she seemed genuinely relieved as she shook his hand. "So, we've got about four hours to go to get to LA. Know any good driving games? Like 'the alphabet game?' Do you have that one here in the States?"

As he watched his new boss climb into the driver's seat, Jack wondered for not the first time today just what he was getting himself into.

_**Doot…deet…doot…deet…**_

Yuri finished showing the ditzy housewife where to find the plumbing section, and was just about to go back to his assigned station in Electrical when his cell rang. He instantly found a deserted aisle and put the phone up to his ear, as he knew that only certain people had access to that number. He was not surprised, then, to recognize the voice that came from the other end.

"Bauer's out," said the voice, which Yuri knew had to belong to Lieutenant Mark Teague of the Supermax' guard detail. The words so caught Yuri off guard, however, that he broke communications protocol and asked the young lieutenant how that had happened.

"Some woman was there. She had written orders, from the President! I read them myself," said Teague.

"How long ago?" asked the Russian.

"Just now," said his informant. Then the man added, "One of my people heard them say they were going to LA."

Yuri hung up the phone, before the call had a chance of being detected and traced. _So that's what the mysterious woman was doing there_, Yuri thought. The unthinkable was happening: the Americans were setting Bauer free. He could not believe that the Americans, blind followers of international law, to a fault, were violating the agreement they had made with his government that would keep the rogue agent under lock and key. He also could not believe that the single event he had been sent here months ago to prevent was actually happening.

Stronger thoughts up to and including curses ran through Yuri's head as he took off the apron and walked out of the store, oblivious to the confused shouts of his supervisor. He had to get back to his apartment and upload the video which undoubtedly showed Bauer and his mysterious rescuer driving away to freedom. If he sent a high-priority message, his government could task a spy satellite to track the black truck, but only if he sent pictures of it to his associates in the Strategic Space Forces. Then he would have to get on the highway and make haste to wherever Bauer was headed.

Yuri was running when he reached the parking lot. It took him only a moment to pop open his car door and slide in, the push start technology of the Japanese car allowing him to be on the move before he had even slammed the door shut.

_**Doot…deet…doot…deet…**_


	2. Meet the New Team

Torchwood: LA

Chapter 2: Meet the New Team

"Welcome to Torchwood Seven," said Gwen.

As he stepped through the door from the facility's underground parking area, Jack was not at all reminded of the old CTU Los Angeles branch. The lighting was much brighter here, and there seemed to be only one level. Though he did notice that the ceiling was high, there didn't seem to be any offices or verandas from which one could overlook the main floor.

Gwen led him to a spacious central area. A young black woman came up to the two of them and handed Gwen a mug of coffee.

"Jack, let me introduce you to my assistant," said Gwen. "She's been with me since the 456 Crisis. Jack, Lois Habiba. Lois, Jack Bauer."

"Pleased to meet you, sir," said Lois. Jack raised an eyebrow at the woman's British accent, but said nothing. Instead, he noticed the two men who had come out of an adjacent office and were walking toward him. One appeared to be in his late thirties, with a goatee and a shock of premature gray in his temples. The other appeared to be younger, but Jack could tell from just one look that he was a military type who kept himself in shape, so it was hard to say exactly how old the man was.

"Ah, there they are," said Gwen, noticing the two men. "Jack, here's two more of your team. Jack Bauer, meet Roy Caftan" – indicating the goateed man – "our resident computer expert and acting science chief." Jack shook the man's hand. "Our head technology person is currently on loan to Torchwood Six, helping them sort through the wreckage of a crashed alien ship," Gwen explained almost apologetically. "She should be back, what, Friday?" Gwen looked to Lois, who nodded. "You'll get the chance to meet her then. And this, of course, is Major Ken Ryan, our head of security."

Jack shook the major's hand. Gwen had told him about Ryan during the car ride. Not about his rank or military background, but about some of his accomplishments in the already up-and-running Torchwood Seven. Ryan had been serving capably as Gwen's second while she searched for a more permanent executive officer. Jack had wondered if it would be a problem for Ryan to be moved back down the chain of command. But as he exchanged pleasantries with the major, Jack did not detect any trace of resentment from the younger man whose job he was going to be taking. He found that encouraging, just one more reason he was glad he had accepted Gwen's offer.

Jack was about to ask Gwen if she had indeed said _alien ship_ just now when Lois was the first to speak: "Gwen, while you were away, the President called for you."

Gwen turned and looked at Jack. "That guard called me out?"

Jack was just as surprised. After thinking about it for a moment, he shook his head, saying, "No, Teague's a bully, and you stood him down. He's not going to stick his neck out after something like that."

"He left a message," continued Lois, who fished out a message slip and read it out loud. "He asks that, whenever you can come up with a convenient time for his weekly briefing, that you please let his chief of staff know."

Gwen stared at Lois blankly for a split second, and then a look of embarrassed comprehension dawned across her face. "Oh, crap!" she said, her hand flying up to her forehead. "And I missed last week, too!" To Jack: "I need to go smooth this." To Ryan: "Why don't you and Roy give Mr. Bauer the grand tour, and I'll catch up with you three when I can."

"Yes ma'am," said Ryan, as he watched Gwen grab Lois by the arm and retreat quickly into the secure videoconference room. He stood, awkwardly, with Roy and Jack, none of the men having anything to say to each other.

"So, Ken," said Caftan finally, in a clipped Scottish brogue, "should we show him the weevil now?"

"No," said Ryan, after thinking about it. "We should probably introduce him to the Doc first."

_**Doot…deet…doot…deet…**_

__Yuri sat in his car, looking through binoculars at the locked gate to the underground parking facility into which Bauer and the mysterious woman had driven. He had followed their black SUV all the way from the Cracker Barrel where they had stopped, just outside of the prison's town. He had then played leapfrog with them all the way to LA, alternately following and leading the truck until it had driven up to the building he was currently parked outside. He hoped that Bauer was still inside, and had not slipped out some back entrance.

He was just debating getting out and checking the building when his phone rang. He looked, and was not surprised to see a Moscow number appear on the viewscreen.

"Yuri, old friend," said the voice on the other end. "Of all the people I was expecting to talk to today, you were not one."

"Nikolai, it is a pleasure to hear from you, too," said Yuri. Though his voice was sarcastic, Yuri's thoughts were completely serious, because he knew that Nikolai Chuikov, the man he was talking to, was head of the Foreign Directorate of the FSB. Yuri's mind spun as he realized the implications, that he had jumped at least five levels from his usual handler at the Service. "I am a little surprised, I must admit, to hear from you and not Kolyarev," fished Yuri.

"The pictures you transmitted caught the Director's attention." Two things Chuikov did not do were equivocate and waste time. "Can you upload your present position to us?"

Yuri did as he was asked. It was surprising to him that such a senior level person as Chuikov would be taking an interest in his case, especially since the Service had deemed Bauer such an unimportant matter that they assigned an aging agent like Yuri to watch him. However, Yuri remembered, Bauer had been listed as an "imminent threat to Russian security" before the Americans had apprehended him. Perhaps the higher ups were worried he might become that again.

"I am sending Mostov and Barin to your location," announced Chuikov. "Wait for them there. They will have further instructions." And the call was terminated, just like that.

Yuri sat for several moments, not even closing the phone. There were so many things wrong with the conversation he had just had, that he did not even know where to begin processing them. He had spoken with somebody who was only one step down from the Director of the FSB. He had been removed from the lead role on his own mission – his one-man mission. And the men he had been ordered to rendezvous with were two men he recognized.

Two men he recognized from his time as an assassin for the Service.

_**Doot…deet…doot…deet…**_

__"Churchill saw what was coming," said Ryan, as the two men walked down the corridor, "and he was terrified that the Nazi's might get hold of all of Torchwood's alien toys. So he made contingency plans, in case England was invaded and they weren't able to drive the Germans back."

"So that's why Canada and Australia," reasoned Jack.

"And here, too," said Ryan. "Remember the Lend-Lease Act? Turns out there was more to it than just destroyers and basing rights. It's just that, by the time Roosevelt was able to ram the 'Torchwood Addendum' down the throats of the isolationists in Congress, the Battle of Britain was over, the British homeland was safe, and the Japanese had our attention at Pearl Harbor. Fortunately, we were able to repurpose the facilities that we were going to give to the Brits to use."

Jack stopped and looked at the major. "What facilities?" he asked.

Ryan looked back and smiled. "Ever heard of the Manhattan Project?"

The two men resumed walking, with the ease of Jack's gait ever so slightly affected by the continuous deconstruction his worldview had been undergoing since that morning. "So how did you get involved with this unit?" asked Jack, changing the subject.

"I had the requisite clearance," said Ryan. "I used to command a squad in Delta Force. At least I did, until I refused to follow an order and got myself relieved."

"The Crisis," guessed Jack, and Ryan's silence confirmed his hunch.

Ryan stopped again. "Agent Bauer," he began, "if you are worried about me accepting your authority, don't be. I have nothing but respect for you. What you did down in Texas was nothing but heroic. And Gwen. It was one of her people in Cardiff who figured out how to drive off the 456, you know. Their own government was trying to take them down, and yet they kept fighting to the end. All I did was step out of the way, so someone else could be told to do something I should have put a stop to myself. If I had had one tenth the guts..."

"Hey," said Bauer, "stop right there. You took a stand for your conscience. There's no shame in that. A lot of people _didn't._ You were on the right side of this. That makes you alright in my book."

Ryan seemed fortified by what Jack had told him, at least as much as his uber-professional demeanor had allowed him to seem vulnerable in the first place.

"So Lois served with Gwen in Cardiff during the Crisis," asked Jack.

"I'm not sure about the exact chronology, but yes," said Ryan, and it was as if his moment of self-doubt had never happened. "Don't underestimate Lois, Jack. She's not combat material yet, don't get me wrong, but I've seen her keep her cool when faced with weird alien stuff that would make some of my old sergeants crap their pants."

"And Caftan?" asked Jack.

"Roy was with the Glasgow Torchwood. He was their tech guy. Spent the crisis in jail after the SAS raided their base. After that, he was helping Gwen coordinate her efforts in Britain when she invited him to join her over here."

"Gwen is making sure to stock this unit with people she can trust," observed Jack. "People who owe no loyalty to anyone but her, and who won't blindly submit to authority."

"Yeah, she sure has a thing for troublemakers," opined Ryan.

They had reached a set of double doors. Ryan opened them. Inside was Roy, who had gone ahead while Ryan showed Jack some of the basic features of the Torchwood facility. Also inside was an older man in a white lab coat, looking to be about forty-five, who looked like he hadn't had a decent shave since about four forty-five the previous afternoon.

"Jack Bauer," said Ryan by way of introduction, "our chief medical officer, Dr. Greg House."

The doctor came forward, aided by a metal cane, as he walked with a pronounced limp. As he shook Jack's hand, he asked, "This the new guy?"

"Our new XO," said Ryan.

House gave Bauer the once over. "Lucky you," he said to Jack.

Jack was undaunted by the older man's attitude. He was determined get to know all of his new team. "Military doctor?" he asked House.

"No. Real one," deadpanned the doctor.

"I'm sorry?" said Bauer. "How did you end up working for Torchwood?" Jack caught himself prejudging the doctor based on his civilian status. His friend and former colleague Chloe had never been in the military, and she had turned into a capable agent with CTU.

"Um, before Gwen recruited him, Doctor House used to head an advanced diagnostic team at a state of the art teaching hospital in New Jersey," said Ryan, with House stifling a chuckle at the major's description of Princeton-Plainsboro as "state of the art."

"Oh," said Jack. "I mean, what made you leave your private practice?"

"Government run health care," said House.

Ryan rolled his eyes as if to say _Not this again_ and then moved over to a table on the other side of the room. "Jack," he said, "we need to do a screening. Just a simple blood test, to make sure you're…in good health."

_**Doot…deet…doot…deet…**_

Gwen was walking out of the conference room when her cellphone rang. She picked it out of her holder and flipped it open sharply. "What!" she demanded.

"Hey, it's me," said Rhys, her husband and best friend.

"Hey," said Gwen back. She regretted being so abrupt a moment ago. She was tired, and getting chewed out by the leader of the free world had not done much for her general mood, but she and Rhys had made a joint resolution long ago not to take out their frustrations on each other.

"I went to the day care," said Rhys.

"Oh?" said Gwen. "What did they say?"

"They said they can fit her in, but not for two weeks."

"What?" said Gwen. "How can they have room for a baby fourteen days from now? Either they have room or they don't!"

"Well, that's what they said," said Rhys.

"Well, we are definitely not putting Annie there," declared Gwen.

"Luv," began Rhys, sighing, "you can't keep holding grudges against places just because they put you off a little. We've tried just about every daycare in the city. Anwen will need to go somewhere. I have an interview next Monday, you know!"

"I know, hon." She rubbed the bridge of her nose. Rhys had been her support through the difficult task of getting Torchwood transferred to the US. He had sold his hauling company back in Cardiff (they were not wanting for money) so that the two of them and their newborn daughter could be a family in Los Angeles. And he had had to deal with the stigma of being an unemployed male 'mom' while trying to catch on as a driver with a local trucking company. "We'll figure it out."

"Did you get the guy you wanted?" asked Rhys, eager to talk about something else.

"Yes, I did," said Gwen.

"See? I told you you could do it," said her husband. "You have 'pull' now!"

"Yes, I have 'pull!'" she echoed, excitedly.

"See, things are already looking up."

"Thanks, babe," Gwen said. Rhys always knew what to say to make her feel better. "Love you."

"Love you too, dear," said Rhys.

_**Doot…deet…doot…deet…**_

"Malinin," the man said as he sat down at the café.

"Sergei!" said Yuri, as he stood up to meet the younger man.

The two of them exchanged hugs. Yuri had handled some of Sergei Mostov's initial training at the Service. He had had great expectations for the novice agent.

"Agent Malinin," said Mostov's partner. Arlen Barin was almost Yuri's age, but continuous time in the field had given the assassin the lean, fit look of someone much younger. As he shook Yuri's hand, the inherent warmth of the gesture did not reach Barin's eyes.

"Agent Barin," said Yuri. The nickname "Butcher Barin" almost came naturally to his tongue, but Yuri held back. There was no point in rehashing what Barin had done in Armenia, especially when Yuri only knew of it through field reports. Plus, Barin would probably not even consider being called a "butcher" an insult, Yuri thought.

"Do you have a location on our targets?" Barin asked, all business. Yuri could see that Barin already had printouts of the photos he had uploaded earlier that day. An 8x11 blowup of the brunette woman was on top of the stack.

"Yes," said Yuri. "Bauer and the woman are inside a structure two blocks from here." He held up his cellphone, so the two men could see what he was talking about.

Barin and Mostov shared a look. "We know this structure," said Mostov.

Yuri was surprised. "Oh?" he asked, then he realized. "You have been following the woman. Who is she?"

"She's…of interest," said Mostov, but not before looking over at his partner as if to make sure it was okay to share even that.

Sensing that he wasn't going to get any more out of the two men, Yuri moved on to describing Bauer and how he had just walked out of an ultra-security prison earlier this morning. The two agents listened with what appeared to be genuine interest, but Yuri knew feigned attention when he saw it.

Yes, something was definitely wrong with this mission.

_**Doot…deet…doot…deet…**_

"He's human," said House, barely looking at Jack's red blood in the ampule as he walked away.

The tension in the room was palpable. Or, at least, it had been. Jack was not sure exactly when it had risen, but it seemed to him that it had dissipated sometime in the thirty seconds or so. And he had a pretty good hunch that that dissipation had coincided with the doctor's most recent pronouncement.

"You sure?" asked Bauer.

House did not catch the sarcasm in Jack's voice, or, if he did, he moved right past it. "If you were 114, the needle would never have been able to penetrate your skin. They have a…'force field,' hovers about four tenths of a millimeter above their skin. I've seen it." He made to put the blood sample into a small freezer. "Only reason I'm not throwing this out is because Gwen wants me to keep DNA samples on all of us. You know, for identification, in case there's ever not enough left to identify."

_Ask a stupid question,_ thought Jack. As he taped gauze to his forearm, Jack had a realization.

"Wait. If I was a 114, wouldn't I shut off the field if I knew I was being screened, so that I could fool the test?"

"Yes, you would," chimed in Ryan, "and that's why Roy over there has been bombarding you with ultrasonic waves for the past five minutes, to make your body think it was being attacked and stimulate a fight or flight reflex." He pointed to Caftan, who nodded back. Roy was standing on the other side of the room, at a table, doing something with an open briefcase whose contents Jack could not see. Jack had noticed Roy and the briefcase when House had asked him to sit down for his "examination;" he had assumed the case was hiding a pistol, and that Roy was supposed to be covering him. This assumption was put to rest when Roy turned some kind of switch and Jack heard what had to be the "power down" sound of some kind of electronic device.

"Don't worry," continued Ryan, "the waves aren't harmful to humans. But what Greg said is correct and worth remembering, Jack. The 114 do not get sick, they do not get minor injuries such as cuts and bruises, and they do not go to hospitals or doctors' offices. And that's another way we can spot them. They will always appear to have perfect health records."

Jack considered what Ryan had told him. He also considered the chair that he had seen sitting in the corner of the room – the chair with the straps hanging off of it – and how Ryan and the others had chosen _not_ to make him sit in that chair for his screening. _Probably saw some of my scars and figured I couldn't be 114 with wounds like that,_ Jack thought. He was just about to ask another question when the doors to the medical bay opened.

"What are you doing?" demanded Gwen, after she had taken in the scene in the room. She turned her gaze sharply to Ryan. "Why are you screening Bauer? This is a waste of time. He's Priority Four!"

"With all due respect, Agent Bauer is Priority Two," Ryan said, putting up a hand to forestall Gwen's objection. "'Anyone promoted to, or granted access to, Torchwood-level clearance shall be screened, regardless of the likelihood of positive result.' Your words, Ms. Cooper."

Gwen continued to fume angrily at Ryan, but Jack could see that she was thinking about what her security chief had said. Before she could say anything, however, Roy decided to try to be helpful.

"Besides," he said, "we already had the equipment out from testing the other one."

_**Doot…deet…doot…deet…**_

Lois could see that the prisoner was lying on the cot on the far side of his holding cell, so she did not have any trepidation about approaching the door. When she got up to it, she noticed that the man had not touched the water bottle she had slid through the slot five hours ago.

"Excuse me," she said, "but aren't you thirsty?"

Lois did _not_ take an involuntary step back from the glass, as the man stood up and approached the door. He was short, with a dark complexion, and about her age, if not a little younger. He brushed aside some of his close-cropped black hair and looked down at the second water bottle Lois held in her hands.

"No, thank you, I'm not thirsty," he said, the croak in his voice belying his words.

"Really?" said Lois. "Because I can give you water. I'm not supposed to let you have anything else, but they said I can give you water. You know, the Geneva Convention and all."

"I'm sorry," said the man, "but I'm not touching anything until I've talked to Gwen Cooper. Don't want to spontaneously 'forget' why I've come all this way. No offense," he added.

"Ah, I see," said Lois. "None taken." With that she unscrewed the cap, took a generous swig of the water herself, and then reattached the cap after wiping the neck of the bottle on her shirt. "Here," she said, sliding the now-tested water bottle into the cell.

The man picked up the new bottle, looking gratefully at Lois. "Thanks," he said, before quickly gulping down the rest of the water. Lois noted that he still ignored the first water bottle.

"So, you're a Londoner," probed Lois, making conversation. His accent had surprised her when she'd first heard it that morning.

"Yes, originally," said the man, not at all unwilling to talk to this latest interrogator.

"What's your name?" asked Lois.

"Adam," he said. "Adam Mitchell."

_**Doot…deet…doot…deet…**_


	3. Gambits

Torchwood: LA

Chapter 3: Gambits

"His name is Adam Mitchell," said Ryan. "British national, age twenty-six. Green card expired as of seven months ago. Security camera footage has him hanging around the coffee shop across the street for the past few days, but it was 6:45 this morning when he tried the lock on the front door. So we let him in and detained him before he could draw any attention to us."

"Is he an alien?" asked Jack. They were looking at the man in the interrogation room. The young man did not look like any alien Bauer had ever seen; of course, the sample size which Jack had to draw conclusions from was in the neighborhood of slim and none, with Slim having decamped at some time in the recent past.

"Space alien? No," said Ryan. "We tested him: he's human. However, I did say his green card has expired, clearly placing him in the 'illegal' subset of aliens, Jack. Try to keep up."

"What's he doing here?" asked Gwen. "What does he want?"

"I was not able to get that yet," admitted Ryan. "However, he has been liberal about several other things. For one, and this is where it gets interesting, he claims to have worked for Henry Van Statten at his compound in Utah."

Jack almost did a double take. Gwen did. Henry Van Statten was not a name to be dropped lightly. The powerful billionaire's disappearance and subsequent discovery – wandering the streets of downtown San Diego with a genuine case of clinical retrograde amnesia – had dominated the news cycle for weeks, right up until the 456 Crisis. Even Jack, who had been on the run at the time, had been able to follow the story as details were revealed night after night on newscast after newscast. There had been multiple conspiracy theories, of course: a secret base, rumors of dozens of dead private military contractors, supposed government coverups, etc. Some had even suggested that Van Statten's "amnesia" was nothing more than a clever ploy to escape justice for whatever had actually happened in Utah.

"Does he know what happened in Utah?" asked Jack.

"Daleks," said Gwen as a quick aside, with an unmistakable undertone of _Shoosh! _

"Turns out," continued Ryan, "there was an Adam Mitchell on Van Statten's Salt Lake City payroll. Under the heading 'Miscellaneous Research Support.' Was listed as officially missing after the incident at that facility, and then suddenly turned up in Manchester a year later. Made no effort to conceal his whereabouts in England. Bank records all point to normal transactions: groceries, bills, music, rent…not the kind of things one puts on a credit card if one is trying to stay hidden, especially after he managed to successfully drop off the grid for the entire year previous." Ryan's voice went quiet as he listed the next item of interest: "Served as the executor of his father's estate, after he died of cancer."

The major handed Gwen a folder. Everyone was silent for a moment. Then Gwen spoke.

"You were going to interrogate him again?" she asked.

"Ma'am, I was going to wait for you and give you the opportunity."

"No," she said, and then she turned and handed the folder to Jack. "Bauer, you're up. Let's see what you can get out of him."

Bauer strode into the interrogation room and sat down across from Adam. The young man was clearly nervous, but not overly so. He proved it by casually wiping a cowlick of black hair off of his forehead and saying, "Great, another one of you."

"Mr. Mitchell, my name is Jack Bauer. I am the second in command of this facility and I have some questions for you."

Adam became agitated at that, to the point of breaking his slouch and sitting up to the table. "'This facility?' Why don't you call it what it is? It's Torchwood! Torchwood! And where is Gwen Cooper, anyway? Ms. Cooper! Oh, Ms. Cooper!" He looked into the one-way mirror, which was actually not a one-way mirror, but a decoy, and thus he looked silly talking to an empty wall while Gwen, Ryan, and Caftan watched him on the hidden camera monitor.

"Mr. Mitchell, you will answer my questions," said Jack, this time a little forcefully. That got Adam's attention, and quieted him down. But he remained sullen and defiant.

Jack had quickly reviewed Mitchell's file before going into the interrogation room. He had mapped out several questions that were of prime importance to get answered in this session, and he had prepared several approaches for how to get his subject to talk. Part of the skill of interrogation, however, as Jack well knew, was being able to adjust one's approach on the fly based upon how the subject presented himself. And Adam was presenting himself in a way that Jack thought he recognized. Quickly, with a calculus done entirely at the subconscious level, Bauer came up with a gambit and tried it.

"How do you know about Torchwood?" _There. Still a question, not giving up the power of the situation, but giving the illusion that the interrogator had slipped up infinitesimally_.

"I've been searching you for some time," said Adam, "even before the 456 Crisis. Mostly in Britain, with the Torchwood Three team, but I had gotten close enough to know when you guys moved your operation to the US." Adam's demeanor changed; his eyes flashed. "Aren't you going to ask me how I found this place?"

_Paydirt! _thought Jack. _In fact, possibly the mother lode._ He had gotten Mitchell talking. Jack had thought that Adam would be a bragger, wanting to rub it in to Torchwood's face how he had gotten past their security screens. His gambit had paid off. _Now I just need to keep the sluice flowing._

"How did you find this base?"

"Oh, it wasn't hard. See, as I told your friend Mr. Ryan, my job with Henry Van Statten was pretty much as a…curator, of his rather unusual collection. Van Statten liked to collect alien artifacts, very much like you. So it seemed only logical that, after what happened at Salt Lake, those artifacts would fall into the hands of the only quasi-government agency specifically tasked with recovering alien technology, vis-à-vis Torchwood."

"The artifacts were that easy to trace?" asked Bauer, not so much for Adam's benefit as that of those watching behind the hidden camera. _I really need to talk to these people about security protocols_.

"No," continued Adam, "but I still had the names and addresses of other collectors of alien paraphernalia all over the West Coast. Mr. Van Statten liked to send me along whenever he purchased a new piece, to verify its authenticity. I contacted some of them, to see if they had heard what happened to the Utah artifacts. They were more than happy to share what they knew. By the way - the Local 502 Pipefitters and Alien Collectors wants me to pass along how very, very unhappy they are about the way you lot have been using eminent domain to seize their alien stuff. FYI."

_He's starting to feel stronger. Time to change to a different line of inquiry; keep him off balance. _"So you went to the US to follow us," led Jack. "How did you get into this country? Your green card has expired. Are you aware that you are here illegally, and as such are subject to US immigration law?"

Adam laughed. "Seriously? I break into one of the most secret bases in the world, and you're threatening me with a deportation hearing?"

_You didn't break in, hotshot, _thought Bauer. This was going to be easier than he thought. After the wild success of his initial salvo, the one thing that Jack had been worried about had been that Mitchell would feed him disinformation designed to distract from truth. But so far, Jack had not detected any subterfuge on Adam's part. The young man was turning out to fit Bauer's preconceived notion of an arrogant amateur to a 'T.' All he had to do was stay out of the way and let Adam's diarrhea of the mouth run its course.

"How did you get into this country?" repeated Jack. It was not one of his critical questions, but it would open the door to one that he did need an answer for.

"The brother of one of the mercs who worked for Van Statten lived in Birmingham," said Adam. "I'd met him once, when he visited. He owns a transport ship. I looked him up when I got back to England. No one had told him what had happened to his brother in Salt Lake. He returned the favor by letting me stow away to Veracruz. From there, I snuck across your border into Texas. Really easy to do."

_Yeah, I know, kid._ Bauer's professional mind took back over. _Seems logistically feasible, and not a rehearsed story. He's not lying to me. Now to find out what Ryan wanted to know._

"Is that how you got back to England? Did you stow away on a ship?

"Huh?" asked Adam, and he seemed genuinely taken off guard. His off-putting manner seemed to be down. Bauer sensed the change, but also sensed there was something behind it. _Careful, but no choice other than to press on now. _

"Because there's no record of you going through British customs anytime in the past eighteen months. And you certainly wouldn't have needed to sneak into your home country, even if you'd lost your passport."

Adam hesitated, and Jack could tell it was more than just trying to avoid being caught in a lie, or the sudden realization that Torchwood's surveillance and investigative assets were more formidable than anticipated.

"Yeah, I hitched a ride with someone," said Adam, and Jack could tell that the young man had suddenly become strangely distant. _Shit!_

Jack found a ray of hope to latch on to, however. _He's not resisting; he just doesn't want to talk about this, for some reason._ Jack decided to table that line of inquiry, and go into his next critical question. He had to get Adam talking again, so he resorted to an attack on the man's ego.

"How do I know any of this is true?"

"Excuse me?" said Adam.

_You heard me._ "How do I know that you worked on alien technology? You have an engineering degree but, for all I know and in today's economy, you could have been Van Statten's janitor. What proof do you have?"

Adam, his momentary reticence gone, began to speak angrily in defense of his story. "I found you, didn't I? The fact that I even know about the Utah artifacts' existence should tell you something. I studied those artifacts for years. I could describe some of them for you. Or better yet – did you happen to find among the artifacts a brown notebook with technical notes and the phone number of a rather homely Mormon girl on the back cover? That's mine."

(In the other room, watching on the hidden camera monitor, Gwen and Ryan both turned to Roy. Roy shrugged, and then, when he realized the other two were still staring at him expectantly, he sighed and left the room to go search through boxes upon boxes of alien tech.)

Back in the interrogation room, Jack was listening as Adam offered to provide a handwriting sample of exactly two words. _Time to ask the big question_, thought Jack.

"Mr. Mitchell, why are you here?"

_**Doot…deet…doot…deet…**_

Mostov and Barin's safehouse turned out to be almost twenty kilometers away from the building Yuri had followed Bauer to. It was a small ranch house in a middle class neighborhood, the lawn kept up just well enough to blend in. The inside of the house was spartan, as would be expected for two professional assassins who just used it as a place to rest and take meals.

_They hadn't discovered the significance of that building,_ thought Yuri. _Otherwise, they would have set up their base closer._

"Sit down and relax, Malinin," said Barin. "We have to report in to Director Chuikov." He and Mostov went into another room, leaving Yuri sitting on a couch. As Yuri looked around, he saw a pair of assault rifles stacked against the fireplace. He went over and looked at the guns. In addition to the rifles, there were grenades, body armor, and boxes of submachine gun ammunition.

_This is not a surveillance operation,_ he thought. _This is gear for staging an assault._

Yuri had been examining the weaponry and ruminating on these thoughts for about ten minutes when the other two men came back into the room. They strode with purpose, and began to gather up the guns and supplies.

"What's going on?" Yuri asked.

Mostov stopped and turned to him. "Chuikov's ordered the next phase of our mission," the young assassin said. "We are going in."

"Going in? To do what?" demanded Yuri.

"We are taking that building," said Barin as he donned a bulletproof vest. "And you are helping," Barin added, tossing Yuri a spare vest.

"Wait! Taking the building? Why?"

"Chuikov's orders," said Mostov. "He's assigned you to us."

"No, I mean why are we risking a war to raid a building?" asked Yuri. It made no sense; Bauer was contained, and there were easier ways to eliminate him than invading an American government bureau.

"There are certain…items… inside that building," said Barin. "Technologies that Moscow has deemed to be vital to Russian interests."

"What sort of items?" asked Yuri.

Mostov and Barin looked at each other. "British items," said Barin after a pause.

"But what about Bauer?" asked Yuri.

Barin shrugged. "Chuikov didn't say," he said, and then went back to gearing up.

Yuri considered what the two men had told him for a moment, and then, with a speed they apparently did not realize he still had, he grabbed a pistol from a box by the couch and pointed it at Barin. "Stop!" he shouted.

The other two men froze. "Yuri," said Mostov, "what are you doing?"

"We are doing nothing!" said Yuri. "I want to talk to Chuikov, and find out where this madness is coming from."

Mostov looked to Barin, who simply shrugged again and gestured for the younger man to hand over his phone to Yuri.

"Fine," said Barin. "Call Chuikov yourself. Though you may have to wait for an answer; the line will not be monitored, as we have gone to operational silence since the 'go' code was given."

"Then we will wait," said Yuri, settling down into a chair and keeping his gun pointed at the two men.

_**Doot…deet…doot…deet…**_

"He wants what?" asked House, as he sat back down with his coffee. The six Torchwood members were all seated in the conference room, watching the video playback of Adam's interrogation.

"He wants to be your coworker, Greg," said Roy derisively. "He's heard about what a great team player you are, so he wants to sign up to work next to you in the medical bay and listen to conservative talk radio for hours on end."

Bauer ignored the interruption. "That's essentially it," he explained to the team, making note of the informal nature of Torchwood Seven's staff meetings. "Mr. Mitchell came here because he feels he is uniquely capable of discovering the secrets behind the Utah artifacts. He came to us to offer us his services."

A couple of laughs and at least one snort were heard from around the table. Even Gwen was unable to keep a straight face, but she did get right back to business.

"Roy, were you able to find any evidence to support Mr. Mitchell's claims of expertise?"

"I didn't find any notebook, no," said Roy. "But I did find a box full of internal shipping receipts. Almost all of them are signed 'A. Mitchell,' and the descriptions given on the attached memos do match some of the items we've already cataloged."

"Okay, so he had access to the artifacts and rarely missed a day of work," said Ryan, "but we already knew he was in their research department. That doesn't prove he was Van Statten's head science guy. He could very well have been their janitor," he said, with a nod in Jack's direction.

"Why not give him a test?" said Lois out of the blue. "Give him one of the artifacts, one that we've already figured out what it does, and see if he can tell us what it is?"

"I'm not giving him access to alien tech," said Gwen.

"I'm not saying give him something dangerous," countered Lois, "Why not one of those never-ending torches, or that thing that blocks out radio waves -"

"The question is," said Jack, raising his voice to be heard, "and the question remains, what do we do with him? I agree with Gwen – this guy turning up here and finding his way to Torchwood is very suspicious. Plus, there are still elements to his story that we have not gotten yet. I think we need to keep interrogating him, until we have the full picture of how he got here and what his intentions are, and then we will have to decide what to do with him."

"Well, he won't go for retcon," said Lois. "He's already paranoid about eating or drinking anything. If we try to retcon him, we'll have to pour it down his throat."

"Of course he knows about retcon," said Gwen. "Van Statten was manufacturing his own retcon, using it on former employees who had held sensitive positions. Makes what happened to him damned fitting, if you ask me."

"What's retcon?" Jack whispered to House.

"A drug that we use," answered House. "Makes you forget…whatever we want you to forget. It's like a 'space rufi.'"

"Greg?" Ryan was saying, continuing once he'd gotten the doctor's attention. "Can you aerosol-ize the dosage? Pump it into his holding cell?"

"No," said House. "Retcon via aerosol doesn't work. The amount of retcon we'd need to deliver a sufficient airborne dosage is so large that it would affect us, too. We'd all be walking around for the next three weeks wondering what the hell we did with our keys."

The room was quiet for a moment, and then Gwen spoke up. "Okay, we can't make any decisions about our guest until we know more." She turned to Bauer. "Jack and Ken will continue to interrogate him. For now, though, let's put him back in holding and let him stew. Maybe he'll think that we no longer find him useful, and that will scare him into talking more." She pushed herself up from the table, with the rest of the team following suit.

"Who else is hungry?" she asked.

_** Doot…deet…doot…deet…**_

Contrary to what Barin had said, Yuri did not have to wait a long time for a response from Moscow. The phone rang, and he picked it up.

"I take it Malinin is being difficult," said Chuikov's voice.

"That's right, Nikolai, I am," he said.

"Malinin? What is the problem there?"

"Why are you ordering this…this madness?" asked Yuri.

"Yuri, there are things going on at the highest levels which you are not aware of," said Chuikov. "The Americans have gained possession of technology that could be used against us. We cannot allow that to happen. We must have that technology. That is why I am ordering you to go into that building and obtain it for Mother Russia."

"For Russia," repeated Yuri, somewhat dubiously. He knew some of the men in Subarov's administration were out for their own gain as much as for the home country.

Chuikov seemed to ignore any subtext behind Yuri's comment. Instead, he attempted to put an end to the discussion by giving the former assassin a direct order. "Agent Malinin, you are to assist Agents Barin and Mostov in the retrieval of the technology from the Americans. The three of you will take that building, clear it of all opposition, and acquire the technology."

Yuri was not taken aback by Chuikov's order. He knew that an order to "acquire" something within a building meant to eliminate anyone they encountered inside of it. However, he also knew something that Chuikov did not.

"There is one thing that you are not aware of, Nikolai," said Yuri.

"What's that?"

"Jack Bauer is in that building."

There was not even the briefest of pauses. "Fine," said Chuikov. "Kill him too. I really don't care." And then he hung up.

_**Doot…deet…doot…deet…**_

As Yuri stood watching the other two Russians load up their truck, and Lois was going from one Torchwood member to another collecting money for a late lunch run, Ryan was walking Adam down to the holding level.

"When do I get to speak to Gwen Cooper?" asked Adam.

Ryan said nothing, just opened the door to the stairwell with his keycard.

"I can help you people," Adam reiterated. "Don't discount me."

"Yeah, whatever you say, sir," said Ryan as he opened the door to the holding cell.

Adam hesitated, and then, when he saw that Ryan was not going to change his mind, he walked into the cell.

After Ryan had shut the door, Adam laid down on his cot. He was thinking about the sequence of events that had landed him in the custody of an organization so secret that most people did not know it existed.

But he was also thinking about the now-obsolete Senex XT-200 security system that he had noticed powering all of the internal door locks in the facility, including the one to his holding cell.

_**Doot…deet…doot…deet…**_


	4. Foreign and Domestic

Torchwood LA

Chapter 4: Foreign and Domestic

Roy was helping House connect his new centrifuge to his computer when Lois found them in the medical bay. The men had planned to hook up the new piece of equipment the previous day, but had had to put that plan on hold with all the excitement involving Mitchell.

"Roy, can I talk to you for a minute?" Lois asked.

"About what?" asked Caftan.

"Our visitor," stated Lois. "I keep wondering what Gwen is going to do with him."

"Don't know, don't care," said Roy. "Figure we're going to be mixing him a retcon cocktail at some point."

"You're not interested in his offer?" asked Lois. "You two are always saying that you need more help down in Science rummaging through all of those artifacts. It's not like there isn't room in the budget…"

"What is this, an employment agency?" remarked Roy. "No. I'm with Bauer – it's a little too suspicious that he just shows up here." Roy turned back to his work. House nodded his concurrence, and also went back to work.

_**Doot…deet…doot…deet…**_

The late afternoon traffic was surprisingly light as Mostov pulled the van into the alley down the block from Torchwood Seven's headquarters. Malinin and Barin jumped out and swept the area with their eyes. Upon seeing no one around, Barin signaled for Mostov to pull the van behind a dumpster. The young assassin did, and soon joined his compatriots with an electronics kit in tow. With Barin and Malinin keeping watch, Mostov opened his case and began to set to work on the power lines.

_**Doot…deet…doot…deet…**_

Ryan knocked on the door to Bauer's office before entering. Of course, it had only been Jack's office since that morning.

"Jack, why don't you go home and get some sleep?" Ryan said. "You've got to be bone tired."

Bauer looked up from the classified reports he had been reading. It had been Gwen's idea that he get acclimated to his new role by reading a selection of mission reports from the Torchwood archives.

"Sleep?" said Jack. "Sleep? I don't think I will ever sleep again after reading some of these reports." He flipped through the most recently read pages one by one. "Creatures that live in old film and suck all the water out of people? Monsters that feed on the energy of orgasms and turn their victims into piles of dust? Fairies? Evil goddamn fairies? My granddaughter has Tinkerbell bedsheets, for Christ's sake!" He threw the stack of papers onto his desk.

"Not all of those reports are from this Torchwood branch," explained Ryan. "When they were still in England, Gwen and Roy found this abandoned building outside of Leeds that had no people, just room after room full of servers. Apparently, that was set up as an archive for all the records from the three major Torchwood facilities in the British Isles. Their computers would download updates to the servers every couple of weeks without any of the Torchwood personnel knowing about it. One of the first things Gwen did after setting up here in LA was have Roy hack into it and transfer all the files to our computers. Took about two days, if I recall."

"You don't say," said Jack.

"Oh yeah," said Ryan. "We found files going back to 2000, from the London branch, which of course no longer exists –"

Ryan's speech was interrupted by the lights in the room suddenly cutting out.

"What the hell?" asked Jack, as the emergency lighting kicked in.

_**Doot…deet…doot…deet…**_

Adam leapt out of the bed as soon as he saw the power go out. He did not know, consciously, what he was doing, but rather some kind of survival instinct had taken over and prompted him into quick action. Acting intuitively, he went to the cell door and jammed the adjustable metal band of his watch (which, at some point during the flight from his bed to the door, he had taken off and folded) into the part of the door seal nearest to where the security panel was situated.

_Come on, come on_, he thought. Adam had worked with the XT-200 series of security locks before, when he was with Van Statten. Although, it was not so much "worked with," as "helped with the replacement of." So he knew that one of a Senex model lock's weaknesses was its peculiar penchant for running through a complete diagnostic cycle whenever the power was restored after an interruption. The cycle only lasted about five seconds. Plus, Senex company literature claimed, correctly, that the vulnerable window was a "non-event," since a built-in feature, included in all 200 and above series systems, sent an extra surge of power to strengthen the magnetic seal attached to the lock, to prevent anyone from taking advantage of the cycle during a power outage. Nevertheless, as one of Adam's coworkers had once demonstrated to a suitably impressed group of techs, it was possible to confuse and therefore temporarily disable the locking mechanism by introducing a metal foreign object into the seal just as the surge was powering up.

"Yes!" said Adam, as his ingenuity was rewarded and the cell door cracked open. He jumped quickly through the open door and out into the corridor.

As he looked around, trying to get his bearings and decide on his next course of action, Adam had a disturbing thought: _Now I am going to be in real trouble._

_**Doot…deet…doot…deet…**_

Yuri and Barin reached the front door, with Mostov bringing up the rear and covering them with his Kalishnikov. As Yuri stopped to take over the covering position, Barin knelt down at the door and swung a bag around to his front. He reached in to pull out a small, oilcloth-covered package.

Yuri did not see Barin's action at first, or he was too focused on the tactical situation. He asked instead a question that Barin had not fully answered during the car ride over.

"How are we going to get in? With the power out, that's only going to freeze the locks."

"With this." Barin unwrapped the package. A ten-inch long blue metal cylinder which looked very much like a family physician's ear scope was revealed.

"What is that?" asked Yuri.

Barin began twisting something at the bottom of the cylinder. "This is a relic of history." He looked down at it, frowning, and then continued to his erstwhile comrade. "It is a copy of a device found in Dzerzhinsky Square in the 1940's, supposedly dropped there by a wayward time traveller on his way somewhere else. It took the best minds of the Soviet Union over four decades to copy its secrets, but, by then, there was no Soviet Union, and so this little miracle sat in a warehouse until the FSB Special Technologies Branch found it."

"What does it do?" Yuri asked.

As if in response, the door's locking bolts audibly disengaged. Yuri and Mostov, who had come up to join the others, shared a look.

"It opens doors," said Barin, and he smiled at the other two men.

_**Doot…deet…doot…deet…**_

Gwen hobbled across her office to see what systems she could still pull up on her computer. Her left knee throbbed from having been smacked directly into the metal leg of her desk not two seconds after the lights had gone out. Throwing herself down into her chair, flipped open her computer, uttering a quick prayer of thanks that the Torchwood desktop units had their own battery backups.

She typed in the passwords to access the Torchwood systems and tried to figure out what had happened to their power supply. Unfortunately, since the Torchwood systems themselves were busy rebooting off emergency power and not yet online, Gwen was not able to receive the warning that the front door was ajar, or see the three men entering the building and using hand signals to decide which direction they would each go.

_**Doot…deet…doot…deet…**_

"The emergency generators should be kicking in, so we'll have everything back up in a few" said Roy, after pushing some of the buttons on the temporarily-useless intercom phone. "I'm going to go check it out."

Roy opened the door and was about to walk out of the infirmary when he noticed the strange man at the end of the hallway. The man was backlit by one of the emergency lights, clad entirely in black and carrying what looked like an assault rifle. Fortunately for Roy, the intruder was looking in another direction, and Roy had enough sense to realize that yelling out an identity challenge to the man would very likely result in his own death. Unfortunately, however, Roy did not have enough luck to avoid bumping into one of the infirmary doors and making a noise.

House and Lois both started at the sound of the shot. House was about to ask what had happened when Roy suddenly fell backwards through the door, his arms flailing as he was trying desperately to point in some direction or other. And there was a bright red spot on the front of his new white shirt.

"Oh my God, Roy!" screamed Lois, and she made to run toward him.

But House thought more quickly, and he grabbed her arm.

"In here!" he said.

_**Doot…deet…doot…deet…**_

Jack and Ryan both heard the shot. Ryan's pistol was immediately out, and both men were crouched down on the floor.

"Where's your armory?" hissed Jack.

"One floor down," whispered Ryan. "The elevator locks in a power outage, and the stairwell doors will all be frozen. Whoever's in here" – Ryan was automatically assuming that the base had been breached, which was standard protocol – "they won't be able to get at our weapons."

"I was thinking of _us_ getting at our weapons," said Jack, looking straight up at Ryan's sidearm. Almost prone, he opened his office door slowly so as not to make any noise.

"Good point," responded Ryan, as he swung the gun out the opening to clear their path of egress. He went out first, and then motioned for Jack to follow him. The hallway was empty.

They heard another two shots, seeming to come from the direction of the infirmary. They ran, as quickly and silently as they could, until they were right outside the medical section's doors. They could see a body half in, half out of the door. Ryan scooted past the door, to take up a position on the opposite side from Jack. As Ryan settled into position with his gun, Jack could see a pained look cross the former Torchwood XO's face when he looked down at the body. Jack couldn't see the dead man's face, as he was getting ready to take a look around the open door, but he recognized Caftan's suede loafers.

Jack peeked around the door. He saw a young-looking man in assault gear standing in the middle of the medical bay, holding an AK-47. The young man's demeanor was too clean cut and professional to make him a terrorist, Jack determined. Just as Bauer was thinking that, the man raised his rifle and fired a shot at a metal door directly across the room from himself. The metal door looked like a bulkhead door from a navy ship, and the bullet that the intruder had just fired behaved exactly like one would expect a bullet fired at a bulkhead door: it ricocheted back, taking out a microscope on a nearby table and causing the gunman to duck instinctively.

As the young intruder stood scratching his head and contemplating his next move, Ryan burst in and fired, catching the man cleanly in the throat as he turned toward the sound. Bauer was in next, and he ran over to the body, but the man was already in his death throes. Ryan came over and delivered the coup de grace to his forehead, just to be sure.

"Now they've heard us," said Bauer. _Never assume you've got them all._ He moved quickly to strip the corpse of its weapon.

"He was shooting an assault rifle at the Quarantine Room door," said Ryan. "If they didn't come when they heard that, they're probably on orders to separate and search." He left unspoken what both men knew was the corollary to that theory: if they were splitting up to cover the entire building, then they meant to kill everyone they found.

"He's Russian," said Jack, looking at the man's Spetznaz tattoo. But he was interrupted by a noise he heard coming from off to his right. He looked over at the metal door again. This time, he saw a flat screen monitor next to it that must have just come online, or maybe it was on its own power supply. It showed a black-and-white view of what Jack figured was the chamber beyond the door. On the screen, he could see Lois looking anxiously into the camera, as if she was trying to peer through the lens at whatever was going on in the main room.

"Hello? Hello?" Lois was saying over a speaker. "Is anybody there?"

Jack went over to take a closer look, and saw an intercom button next to the monitor.

"Lois! What are you doing in there?"

"Greg and I hid here, when we heard the shots," she said. She moved, and Jack could see House seated on an exam bed behind her. "Where's Roy? What's happened to him?"

Jack looked over to Caftan's body, where Ryan had gone to after emptying the assassin's pockets. Ryan was kneeling and checking for a pulse. He looked up at Jack and shook his head.

"Roy's dead," said Jack. Lois put a hand up to her mouth, and Jack could even see House behind her react to the news. "How do we get them out of there?" asked Jack, turning to Ryan.

Ryan was already back standing next to him. "Jack, they have a five-day supply of air and water between them. It would take a bunker-buster to breach that chamber" he said, pointing at the Quarantine Room's walls. "Right now, they're safer there than out here with us."

Jack saw the logic of what Ryan said. With one last look at Lois and House on the monitor, he chambered a round in the AK and then followed Ryan out of Medical, taking great care to step over Roy's body.

_** Doot…deet…doot…deet…**_

Gwen had her hand on her gun as soon as she heard the shots. Her other hand went to her computer, but she was unable to make the machine pull up the security cameras. _I don't know how many there are_, she thought. _And if it was just me, it wouldn't matter. But I don't know how safe my people are_. The intercoms were probably up, but using them would give away her position, and the positions of anyone who answered her page. And no one was likely on the radio coms, so there was no point in trying that. While she was thinking, her hand brushed against her cellphone.

_Gwen, you're an idiot! _she thought. Of course she could use her cellphone to contact her team! The Torchwood building was shielded from all types of transmissions; the only reason cellphones worked at all in the hub was because Torchwood Seven had its own private cell transceiver. Which had to have had time to boot up by now.

Gwen opened her phone and tried to text Ryan, but got nothing. She wanted to curse at her bad luck, but there was no time. Instead, she went to her door and peeked out. She thought she saw a flash of movement around a corner, so she ducked back into her office. Taking a couple of deep breaths, Gwen steeled herself and looked around the door again. She heard the movement this time, someone trying and failing to be stealthy as they opened and closed doors down the hall. It seemed to be coming from near the conference room.

Gwen had another _I'm stupid!_ revelation. She had already tried to reach an outside line from her office, and come to the realization that the phones had been cut along with the power. But she remembered that the conference room had secure landlines running into it. Those were not as easily accessible as the main lines and the power, and likely to still be in operation. If she could get to them, she could contact the nearest U.S. military forces for help.

Crouching down, she stepped out into the hallway. She kept to the shadows and quickly reached the conference room door. She pushed it open with her gun barrel, and stepped inside.

The room was dark. Gwen walked slowly around the conference table, leading with her gun. She could see the secure phones' night lights, indicating that the lines were ready to go. She cleared the table, and the desk with the phones was only ten feet away.

Malinin burst forth from behind a chair and tackled her, catching her squarely on the hip. The impact knocked her down and knocked the gun out of her hand. As she scrambled for the pistol, the man was on top of her. She turned and looked up just in time to see Yuri's fist.

_**Doot…deet…doot…deet…**_

Ryan took the lead as they charged into the science lab. Barin's three-round burst sailed high over them. Jack ducked left as Ryan reestablished himself to the right. The two Torchwood operatives tried to see where the Russian was hiding. Barin had eluded them during their brief gun battle in the hallway, had somehow managed to get into the secure laboratory, and was now firing towards the door from a concealed position.

Bauer signaled to Ryan that he was going to try to circle around the lab and flank the intruder. Ryan nodded assent. As Jack moved, however, he knocked some piece of equipment off of a table and drew another burst from their target. All Jack could do was fire a wild shot from his rifle as he dove for cover. But Ryan had been waiting and watching. As Barin was shifting position, Ryan jumped up, located him, and put two shots directly into his chest.

"Fox two," said Ryan, updating the tally of hostiles that they had dispatched. He moved toward the table that the Russian had been hiding behind, his gun at the ready.

Barin, however, had been wearing Kevlar, and was able to jump up himself, and he shot three of his own bullets into Ryan. Without body armor of his own, Ryan never had a chance, and he was dead before he hit the ground. Barin turned to locate his other attacker.

That was when he saw the cart that Jack had sent rolling at him. Barin took his hands off his rifle to stop the cart before it hit him, which allowed Bauer time to close the distance between them and smack the assassin in the head with the stock of his weapon. Barin recoiled from the blow, but he had his hands on his weapon quickly and fired another burst in Jack's general direction.

Luckily, Jack had ducked, so the bullets missed him again. As Barin was adjusting his aim, Bauer flipped his rifle to full automatic and emptied the magazine, not at Barin's armored chest, but in a wide arc at thigh level. The Russian screamed in pain and fell as Jack's bullets struck home. Bauer followed his adversary and brought his rifle up to deliver another thrust to the man's skull. The Russian realized what Bauer was doing and began to line up another shot from the ground. But Jack was quicker.

After confirming that the Russian was actually dead, Jack went over to Ryan and made the same check. He closed his subordinate's eyes with his hand. Pausing briefly, out of respect, Jack then discarded his AK and took Ryan's gun out of his dead hand.

_**Doot…deet…doot…deet…**_

Yuri's fight with Gwen had devolved into something of a Mexican standoff. He had her by the neck, and she could not break his hold, but he could do no more than hold on to her tightly, and hold onto his gun with the other hand, because she kept struggling: if he relaxed his headlock, or tried to move with her, she would get free.

"What is this place?" he asked the woman. "What do you have in here?"

"Go to hell!" said Gwen, and she tried to drive Malinin back into the wall.

As he was pressing back to keep her from moving him, Yuri almost missed Jack enter the room and roll behind the conference table. His reaction shot went understandably wide.

"Don't move!" shouted Malinin.

Bauer did nothing of the sort, as he needed to make sure he had cover. From around a chair, he looked at Yuri. The Russian had Gwen completely shielding his body and head. Jack wasn't about to take the shot anyway, as he knew Ryan's pistol only had three rounds left.

"Put your weapon down!" yelled Malinin. "I'll kill her!" He was back to keeping his weapon to Gwen's head, because he knew that the tactical situation didn't favor him taking a shot at Bauer, either.

"Jack, take the shot!" Gwen urged Bauer, though Yuri's arm around her neck served to muffle her words.

Bauer was considering what to do when he spotted someone out of the corner of his eye. _Mitchell!_ he thought. _What's he doing here? _He had forgotten about Adam down in the holding cell. But now the young man was standing in the doorway, having somehow escaped and followed him.

"Hey!" said Mitchell, stepping into the room and drawing the Russian's attention. Yuri turned his head, saw the interloper, and shifted his gun hand to point it at the young man. It seemed to happen in slow motion; Bauer could do nothing, not even shout out a warning to Adam.

Just as Yuri was about to shoot, however, a curious thing happened: Adam held up his hand and snapped his fingers. And the assassin stopped. He just stood there, with an incredulous look on his face. Bauer was dumbfounded; he had thought that Mitchell was a dead man from the moment he had walked in on the scene, but the Russian had just stopped with his gun not even fully pointed at the young engineer. Even more curious: Gwen had the same shocked look on _her_ face as she stared at Mitchell. She had stopped struggling and was just staring at him.

Bauer took advantage of the bizarre moment to rise. The action had the desired effect; Gwen noticed him a split second before the Russian did. Seeming to remember where she was, she went limp and dropped straight down out of Yuri's suddenly loose grip. Malinin, noticing that his human shield was gone, turned to face Bauer and bring his gun to bear. Jack, however, had already lined up his shot and took Yuri down with a perfect shot right between the eyes. Seeing the assassin slide down the wall leaving a trail of blood, Jack walked over to check on Gwen. She still had the same confused expression on her face, and she was still staring at Adam. So Jack turned to look at him, too.

His first horrified thought was that Malinin had indeed gotten a shot off, or that his own bullet had gone through the Russian's head and ricocheted back to hit Adam. For where Adam's forehead should have been there was a big hole surrounded by peeled-back flaps of skin; Bauer could see clear through to the young man's exposed brain. Before Jack could process the image any further, however, Adam snapped his fingers again, and the starfish-shaped skin flaps moved as one and _closed_ the hole in his forehead.

Jack just stood there, staring at Adam. Adam just stood and stared back, breathing the hard breath of adrenaline withdrawal. Belatedly, not really sure what else to do, Jack pointed his gun perfunctorily at Adam, who quickly put his hands up. Jack looked over to Gwen, seeking guidance in her eyes, but he could tell that she had none to give him yet.

_**Doot…deet…doot…deet…**_


	5. Going Forward

Torchwood LA

Chapter 5: Going Forward

"And he just left you like that?" asked Bauer. He and Gwen were back in the interrogation room, grilling Mitchell. They had already had House re-administer the 114 test to the young engineer – this time using the chair with the straps – and again Adam had been proven to be human.

"Yes," said Adam. He had long since stopped crying. Reliving to Gwen and Jack how he had travelled 200,000 years into the future and had a chip implanted in his brain so he could access future technology, only to be abandoned in his present state by the Doctor when he had tried to smuggle said technology to the present, had drained him of any fear over what the Torchwood team would do to him. "I guess he wanted to make an example of me, for tampering with the timeline." Adam relaxed; he thought and realized that this was probably the first time that he had told anyone the truth of what had happened on Satellite 5.

Gwen motioned to Jack, who followed her out of the room.

"You buying this?" asked Jack, once the door had shut.

Gwen held up a hand as she watched Adam on the monitor. "I've heard of this Doctor," she said. "In fact, I think I met him once, on a video call. Kind of condescending, if he's the bloke I'm thinking of."

Bauer turned to look at the monitor. At least now he had the answer for how Mitchell had gotten back to England, and why he had seemed to drop off the grid. But that still left the larger question: what were they going to do with him?

Gwen must have been thinking the exact same thing. "He got past three security locks," she said.

"Yeah," said Bauer, shaking his head. He had heard from Chloe, offhand, about a design flaw with one of the Senex models, but he had been out of the intelligence game for so long that such information no longer held relevance for him. Still, he felt he should have caught the fact that his new unit was using an obsolete security system. "I know someone who's really good at security and electronics. If you'll authorize the budget, I can get her to come in and help install a new system."

"And then we'll have to wipe her memory," said Gwen, turning to Jack. "Or…we could use Mitchell…"

"What?" said Bauer.

"Well, it was his job with Van Statten, wasn't it? Replacing the security system? He should know a good one to use as a replacement then."

"That's not what I meant," said Jack. "You can't trust him. He breaks in, right before we're attacked –"

"Will you stop with the conspiracy theory?" asked Gwen. "I mean, an assault squad comes in with guns, kills two of my team, pins the rest of us down so they can take our alien crap at will. What need do they have for infiltration at this point?"

Bauer said nothing. He could tell that Gwen was getting close to a breaking point. He realized that, though she was a combat veteran, this was probably the first time she had lost people as a commanding officer. He wanted to offer advice, to tell her she could lean on his experience, and on him, but he knew that that was the last thing she could admit to if she was going to be an effective leader. He would make sure to make himself available for her, however, if she needed him.

"Put him back in holding," said Gwen, "until I decide what to do." And with that, she left Bauer to carry out her instructions.

_**Doot…deet…doot…deet…**_

__House finished picking up what was left of a microscope, and then slowly and painfully picked himself up to a standing position. Grabbing his cane, he walked over to the barrel Lois had suborned for him to pick up the debris from the gunfight, and tossed in his full trash bag. He looked around the medical bay, trying very hard not to look at the doorway where Roy's body had lain, or in the general direction of Torchwood Seven's morgue.

Lois came in. She saw he was struggling with moving the barrel out of the way, so she went over and helped him. He looked at her with gratitude in her eyes. Then he went over to look at the stains in the doorway, where Caftan had fallen. Lois followed him and stood next to him. They just stood for a while together. Then they each changed into a fresh pair of gloves, and began to clean the floor.

_**Doot…deet…doot…deet…**_

Gwen was closing her cellphone when Jack came in to her office. She gestured for him to take a seat as she pulled up a file on her computer. She also brushed a sleeve across her cheek to wipe off the tear.

"This is a flash from your CIA section chief in Moscow," she said, turning the computer to face Jack. "Just happened this morning. Or, morning there," she clarified.

Jack looked. He scanned the document. It stated that Nikolai Chuikov, a Deputy Director of the FSB, had died scant hours ago.

"Suicide," grunted Jack, his tone indicating his opinion of the veracity of the Moscow Militia's medical diagnosis. Of course, in this line of work, he didn't need House to tell him that sudden onset lead poisoning was often misdiagnosed.

"Apparently, he was 'acting alone,'" said Gwen, the sarcasm noticeable in her voice, too.

"And I'm the king of France," said Jack. "Subarov had to be involved. He used to run the FSB; any operation like this could only have come from the Kremlin." He paused for a moment to marshal his argument. "Listen, Gwen," he began, "you can't have someone on your team who endangers it by their very presence."

"Jack, I do _not_ want to have this discussion now," said Gwen crossly, though the fatigue and the emotional stresses of the day had dampened her anger to a smoldering ember of itself. "Whatever I decide about Adam –"

"I was talking about me," said Jack, and then he said nothing.

Gwen looked up at Bauer, her expression inscrutable for a few moments. And then she began pulling up more computer files.

"Ryan had begun an investigation," she said. "About three weeks ago. Greg and Lois both reported suspicious cars parked on their streets. Roy thought he saw somebody tailing him at the supermarket. Facial recognition picked up these two – " she pulled up surveillance camera photos of Barin and Mostov " – walking by the front entrance far too often for random chance. Ken couldn't dig anything up, however, so we left it as a pending case, changed our routines and security protocols, and then went on believing that we were safe. Just another happy bunch of government pensioners, when I should have known better!" She stopped to calm herself.

"You can't blame yourself for this," said Bauer.

"And neither can you, Jack," replied Gwen. "Neither can you."

_**Doot…deet…doot…deet…**_

Adam had actually nearly dozed off by the time Jack came down to the holding area. Bauer made sure to be loud when opening the cell door.

Adam sat up. "Come to get rid of me?" He was too shocked and tired to be scared.

"No," said Jack. "I'm putting you to work." He gestured to the young man to come out of the cell. "The people who attacked us hacked in a virus right before they cut our phone lines. That's why our systems took so long to boot up after the power went out. Gwen's isolated the code, but she needs help removing it from all the servers. Roy was their computer expert." Bauer left the rest of the thought unsaid.

"And after I help with that?"

"You go home, and come back first thing in the morning to help me plan the upgrade to the security systems," said Jack.

Adam stood there for a while, processing. He was beyond surprised. "You've decided to let me join you?" he finally asked.

"No, but Gwen did. Seems she has a soft spot for people who save her life."

The fact that Jack had been clear to say that it was _somebody else's_ idea to bring him into the fold at Torchwood served to confirm that it was really happening. Still, he thought it best to be honest.

"What if I told you I was just trying to find my way out when I came into that room?"

"Then I would tell you I didn't buy that," answered Jack. "If you were trying to escape, you would have run _away_ from the noise and the gunshots." He walked over and put a hand on Mitchell's shoulder. "And you didn't _have to_ reveal that thing in your head, but you did, because you knew it would create one hell of a distraction."

Adam looked down and nodded. He looked back up at Jack. "All right," he said.

Jack nodded back, and they both started to walk out of the room. "You're staying at the Respite Motel off the Freeway." It was not a question; Ryan's security workup on Mitchell had been very thorough.

"Yes," said Adam.

"Make arrangements to stay there through the weekend," said Jack. "Lois can help you find a place like she did for me, but Gwen sent her home for the night, and with all that's happened, she's not going to have time until probably…oh, _dammit!_"

Adam stopped sharply. He was still on edge from the gunfight earlier, so Bauer's tone immediately ratcheted up his tension level. "What is it?" he asked.

Bauer stopped, and rubbed his hands over his face. He was tired, too. "I forgot to talk to Lois before she left." He looked over at Adam and laughed. "I don't know where the hell I live!"

_**Doot…deet…doot…deet…**_

After calling Lois to get detailed info on his new apartment, and then going back to the science lab to finish the cleanup in there, Jack made his way back to Gwen's office. Gwen was alone again, as Adam had already left, too, having made short work of the Russians' computer virus.

"Mitchell's that good, huh?" opined Jack, referencing the now up-and-running Torchwood computers.

"Yeah," said Gwen.

"Guess you were right about him," said Jack, settling down into a chair.

"Plus, he's got nowhere else to go." Gwen stood up and walked over to sit on her desk in front of Jack. "Jack, I thought about what you said earlier."

"Oh?"

"So I made a few calls while you were working." She reached over and grabbed a document to hand to Jack.

Bauer looked at it. "A copy of my parole?" he asked after a cursory examination.

"No. A pardon."

Bauer was speechless for a moment. "But he can't pardon me," he finally said. "That would break the agreement we had with the Russians –"

"Which they have already broken, when they attacked this place," finished Gwen. "They started an international incident and nearly a war, trying to steal our technology. Subarov knows it, and he doesn't want this to blow up in his face." She sat down beside him. "You are now officially off limits to the Russians. Any attack on you – or Torchwood – by them will be regarded most unfavorably by the United States government. You no longer have to stay locked up to satisfy the terms of the agreement."

"And my family?" asked Bauer.

"Them too," replied Gwen. "They're safe."

"How?" was all Bauer could say. He knew the Russians would not roll over that easy, after what had happened in New York.

"After I called your president, I called in a big favor at UNIT," said Gwen. "Actually, I called a friend at UNIT, who called in a big favor."

"UNIT? What do they have to do with anything?" asked Jack. His confidence in the UN, like that of most Americans after the failed New York peace conference, was pretty low. He doubted that a bunch of bureaucrats and weapons inspectors like the United Nations Intelligence Taskforce could tie the can to a corrupt regime like Subarov's.

"UNIT is building a new _Valiant_-class carrier," explained Gwen, "and they want to base it in Russia. My friend pulled some strings, and got her bosses to threaten the Russians that they would go to India if Subarov didn't acquiesce to the new agreement."

"Makes sense," said Jack. "India has better deep water ports for a nuclear carrier."

Gwen barely stifled a quick laugh. "Oh, Jack, don't ever lose that naiveté," she said, still smiling. "It so becomes you."

Jack said nothing for a moment, and then, "Thank you."

"You're welcome, Jack. You've earned it." She stood up and offered her hand. "The question is, now that you are a free man, will you stay with Torchwood?"

Bauer stood also. Looking Gwen straight in the eye and smiling, he took her hand again and shook it. "I've got nowhere else to go," he said.

_**Doot…deet…doot…deet…**_


	6. Previews WARNING:  Contains Spoilers

(Author's note: I saw someone do this in a Star Trek/BSG crossover, and thought it was a way cool idea.)

Torchwood: LA

Previews of coming attractions

WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS

_** If you thought that Torchwood fanfic set after Children of Earth could not be written now that there is a Series 4, then you…don't…know…JACK!**_

**scene**

"So, you're a man in black now?"

"I fought against assassination attempts, a nuclear bomb plot, bioweapons, a plot to turn every nuclear power plant in the countryinto a bomb…" said Bauer. "After that, storming the alien ship from _Independence Day_ seemed to be the next logical step."

**scene**

Gwen caught up to Jack. She had to stop and catch her breath, too.

"Damn," she panted. "I hate Nostrovites."

**scene**

Gwen was staying perfectly still. Keeping her hands in the air, she spoke calmly and tried to reason with the woman who was pointing a gun at her head.

"Look, if we wanted to hurt you-"

"HOW IS THAT SUPPOSED TO BE REASSURING?"

**scene**

Everyone stopped to stare at the alien. It almost looked like it was trying to communicate with them.

"Bauer, just shoot the damn thing already," said House.

**scene**

"No, it's my fault," said Lois, as she collected her gun and badge from the now thoroughly frightened rent-a-cops. "I should have checked my weapon before going through." She re-holstered the offending pistol, and then proceeded to walk right through the metal detector again and set off the alarm a second time.

"I'm sorry! I'm sorry!" she pleaded, putting her hands on her head again. "I don't usually get to bring the gun!"

**scene**

"And who are you, sir?" demanded the alien.

"Greg House. Torchwood."

**scene**

Jack walked closer to Adam. He spoke in a low voice. "She didn't accidentally snap her fingers. It was you, wasn't it?"

Adam confirmed Jack's theory by saying nothing.

"You wanted her to know the real you." He threw his hand up. "Do you have any idea how stupid that was?"

**scene**

"That's his thing, Jack," said Rhys, as he finished freeing Bauer and helped him stand up. "He can't die. I mean he does, but then he comes back. I've seen it!" He looked over at the man in the blue coat. "He's Captain Jack Harkness, Time Agent from the fifty-first century. He's a fixed point in time and space." A beat went by. "And he's gay."

**scene**

"Oh, for Pete's sake…" Gwen reached over and snatched up the headset. "I outrank you both," she practically barked into the microphone. "Now get into the bed!"

Harkness looked over at Adam. "I have so used_ that_ line before!"

**scene**

"What demons?" asked Gwen.

_The ones you are fighting,_ she said.

Gwen realized with a start what had seemed off, or at least more off than a girl that looked exactly like her floating in midair in a room illuminated by blue flames: the girl's lips had not moved, nor had her throat or her chest, every time she had spoken. The voice seemed to be coming out of thin air. She wondered offhand if it was telepathy.

_I could not stop the demons from coming in through the rift,_ Gwyneth repeated. _So I opened the rift wider, and let in the angels. _

**scene**

Jack stepped on the 114's sword-arm, pinning it to the ground. The man's human persona was long gone. His movements were all alien, but Bauer could see that even those movements were coming more slowly as it lay bleeding out. It took a few moments, but the alien finally noticed that it could not move its weapon arm, and then it turned a pair of glazed eyes up to the Torchwood agent.

"Jack Bauer," it rasped, all traces of humanity gone from its voice. "You have been factored into our plans."

"Factor this," said Jack, aiming his gun.

The Torchwood Seven team will return!


End file.
